Nesrine Malik is right (People voted for Boris Johnson knowing he was a liar. It’s too late to start shifting the blame, 19 June), the British have a peculiar penchant for an “aristocratic class” whose shortcomings we are prepared to overlook. In fact, the more elite their credentials, the better, just as long as it is stripped of its haughtiness and flatters us with what looks like its earnest attention.
This, in part, explains the love affair with Boris Johnson, the non-aristocrat always eager to flaunt the cultural capital that made him an eminent member of the club. His self-deprecating buffoonery was lapped up by many who might have been thought to resent everything he stands for. The more there was talk of his intellect, learning and charm, despite this being a smörgåsbord of superficiality, the more willingly some were duped by his ingratiating bonhomie and affectation of chumminess.
Malik pleads for “self-reflection”, but I suspect it will be unheeded by those who need it most. Too many of us are seduced by promises of individual advantage from those who care little for the social consequences of making them. Too great a proportion of the electorate has a selective memory, a selfish conscience and an unreliable moral compass. And we have an electoral system that rewards their geographical clustering. That is why for 50 of the 78 years since the war, we have had to endure Conservative governments. It’s not that we always fall for lies. We just too often fall for Tories.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk
• I would add two other factors to Nesrine Malik’s penetrating analysis of the electorate’s infatuation with Boris Johnson and his 2019 election victory. First, large numbers voted against Jeremy Corbyn as much as for Johnson. This was particularly evident in the “red wall” seats, and unsurprising given the vitriol levelled against Corbyn, and the left’s so-called capture of Labour, by the rightwing propaganda sheets.
During 2019, I worked in a minor role as a climate adviser for the MP Clive Lewis in the shadow Treasury team, and watched as the party struggled to overcome this distorting outpouring across the mainstream press and targeted social media. Also, doesn’t most blame for Johnson’s rise to power lie with the Tory base who clamoured for his anointment despite his well-documented moral failures, and those pusillanimous Tory MPs who would admit to his extreme unsuitability off the record but elected him leader anyway?
Charles Secrett
Brighton, East Sussex
• Nesrine Malik argues that Boris Johnson’s rise to power can be attributed to qualities that “in our national psyche made him forgivable”. Really? The reason he got so far was because the media drew a veil over his past. Years before becoming prime minister, it was clear his “qualities” were mendacity, incompetence, racism, homophobia and the condemnation of the less fortunate for a cheap laugh. No Labour politician would have got away with such a record.
Chris Donnison
Sheffield
• Nesrine Malik was spot-on to say that Oscar Wilde’s acid description of a certain type of upper-class persona neatly sums up Boris Johnson. Another Wilde quotation perfectly evokes what many think about his departure from the Commons: “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
Mike Pender
Cardiff
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
